Job Security and Income Replacement for Individuals in Quarantine: The Need for Legislation

Abstract

For thousands of years, civilized societies have attempted to prevent the spread of communicable diseases by preventing those already afflicted from having contact with those who were still well.The term quarantine is derived from the Italian words quarantina and quaranta giorni, which were used in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and referred to a forty-day period in which certain ships entering the port of Venice were obliged to wait in isolation before any persons or goods were permitted to go ashore.The practice of quarantine, as well as the Italian-derived word itself, was widely adopted by other countries to separate potentially exposed individuals from the rest of society until there was reasonable certainty that the suspected individuals were unaffected.

Keywords: Public Health, Quarantine, SARS, employment, ADA, FMLA, Wrongful discharge, Pandemic, Income replacement, job security

JEL Classification: K31, K32